A draft joint statement of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit would call for a study on the possibility of a free trade agreement for the entire zone, Japan's best-selling Yomiuri Shimbun said, without citing sources.

Officials had no immediate comment on the report, but Japan's trade minister Tuesday said the country had no objections to the idea.

Japan had earlier proposed an economic partnership agreement, or EPA, involving 16 Asia-Pacific nations -- the 10-member Asean Southeast Asian bloc plus Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

But the United States informally objected to being excluded from the pact, saying it did not want "a line drawn in the middle of the Pacific", Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported Sunday.

"It is quite natural for the United States to express anxiety over its absence from the framework of Asia, which has extremely high potential," Akiri Amari, the minister of economy, trade and industry, said Tuesday.

He said Japan's proposal would not overlap.

"An East Asian EPA can play an important role in laying the foundation for a framework including the United States," Amari told reporters.

Both the US and Japan have been seeking bilateral and multilateral economic pacts amid the breakdown in global trade liberalization negotiations.

The US has been holding tough talks with South Korea on what would be the biggest US free-trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico that took effect in 1994.

Asean (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has also been steadily reducing tariffs in the region as it moves towards a European-style single market by 2015.

China and South Korea have concluded free trade agreements with the Southeast Asian bloc, while Japan has been holding talks with Asean and reached separate bilateral deals with Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.